The fifteenth season of the Indian Premier League is all set to get underway from next week. In preparation of the mega tournament, players- local and international- have already started joining up with their respective franchises. The ones who haven’t arrived yet are expected to be here sooner rather than later.
Delhi Capitals likely to miss five overseas players for the first few games
But there is one team that seems to be particularly hamstrung by the unavailability of their overseas players; especially in the early stages of this year’s tournament. The Delhi Capitals- due to a combination of several international cricket series overlapping with the IPL and the subsequent quarantine restrictions- will be missing as many as five of their seven overseas players for the first few matches of the season.
The IPL starts on March 26 with the season opener between the Chennai Super Kings and the Kolkata Knight Riders. Leading upto that date, Pakistan and Australia square off in the last game of their ongoing 3-match test series at Lahore that could finish at the latest by 25th March. Meanwhile, South Africa will host Bangladesh for a 3-ODI series that concludes on March 23.
Pakistan-Australia, South Africa-Bangladesh series overlapping with the start of IPL
The Capitals, in the midst of all this action, will play its first game of the season against the Mumbai Indians on March 27. So technically, most of their overseas players should be available by that date. But the mandatory COVID-19 quarantine restriction put in place by the BCCI could mean that David Warner, Lungi Ngidi, and Mustafizur Rahman end up missing the first game of the season.
Warner will be eligible to depart as soon as the Pakistan test concludes, while Ngidi and Fizz- who’ll be squaring off against each other in the SA vs BAN ODIs- would be able to depart latest by 23rd. There could be some slim margins that might see the three players eligible to play in DC’s season opener. But realistically, the situation seems nigh unlikely.
Lungi, Rahman likely to miss the first game; Warner and Marsh might miss 2
Warner’s fellow Australian compatriot, Mitch Marsh, meanwhile, has been named in the white-ball series against Pakistan, comprising of 3 ODIs and a T20I. The series comes to a close on 6 April, and it’s from then that Marsh- and Warner, and all other Australia contracted players participating in the IPL- become eligible to play. This can be attributed to Cricket Australia’s new policy, wherein contracted players are disallowed from playing franchise cricket while the Australian national team is in action.
But what this means is that Warner will be able to play for Delhi earliest from 7 April- their third match against the Lucknow Supergiants. Marsh, meanwhile, might have to wait until 10 to feature in the fourth match against KKR.
Nortje likely to get ruled out of the season
Sadly, that’s not the end of Delhi Capital’s overseas struggles this season, as Anrich Nortje- one of their premier, retained players- is likely to miss out a big part of, or potentially, the entire IPL season due to a chronic back injury.
So as it stands at the moment, David Warner, Mitch Marsh, Anrich Nortje, Lungi Ngidi, and Mustafizur Rahman will all end up missing the first couple of games for DC. This leaves Tim Seifert and Rovman Powell as the only 2 options available at the team’s disposal to fit into the playing XI. Seifert will get a good opportunity to partner Prithvi Shaw at the top order as a replacement for Warner, while Powell would get to make a strong case for himself in DC’s inexperienced middle order.
It remains to be seen if the DC management is able to negotiate with the BCCI to get the quarantine restrictions reduced so that their players can feature for the season opener. But as it stands at the moment, the Capitals will be fielding a depleted starting XI in their season opener against Mumbai.